Soviet naval art: a discussion about "dominance at sea"
One of the most important components of the naval fleet is naval strategy and tactics. The path of Soviet naval science in the second half of the XNUMXth century was difficult. The political leadership of the country, as well as the army, had a very low opinion of the capabilities of the fleet in a future war. At the same time, the command of the fleet could not effectively participate in political games and defend the interests of the fleet in them.
This was the result of a confrontation within the naval command itself, between supporters of the independence of the fleet and supporters of a unified military strategy and science, which led to a weakening of the overall position of the fleet on key issues.
Turning to the analysis of the discussion itself, it should be noted that the first post-war decade was the time of the most active comprehension of the experience of the Second World War. The existing "Combat Charter of the Navy of the USSR of 1945" (BU-45), written in the last months of the war, was only a reaction to the already largely receded problems of the war at sea of the Second World War. A new theory was needed to meet the needs of rapidly developing technologies (such as jet propulsion and rocket weapons).
"On the essence of maritime operations"
The publication of Admiral V. A. Alafuzov “On the essence of naval operations” in 1946 should be considered the beginning of the post-war discussion about the further development of the Navy. In this article, he analyzes and summarizes the experience of naval operations during the war and displays the main features of their conduct. However, one of the main issues, which was subsequently widely discussed, was the question of "domination of the sea." V. A. Alafuzov in an article of 1946 formulates it as follows:
Dominance at sea, according to V. A. Alafuzov, is divided into permanent and temporary. Temporary dominance was to be achieved in a certain area for the duration of the operation.
In the operation itself, the admiral identifies three areas: the main, decisive and auxiliary. On the decisive axis "the enemy's main obstacle to the solution of the problem is overcome," and in the main direction "the goal of the operation is directly achieved."
In addition, the operation, according to V. A. Alafuzov, should not be an isolated act, but an integral part of the war. Thus, the author notes that any operation must be based on dominance in the permanent zone, and this dominance must be achieved by the previous operation. From this it follows that when planning an operation, the achievements of the previous and the prospects for future operations should be taken into account.
Thus, V. A. Alafuzov’s article raised the question of the existence of a naval strategy independent of land and introduced the for some time forgotten term “dominance at sea”, and also set the main task of the fleet to expand its zone of dominance for successful operations in a given theater military operations.
The researches of Admiral V. A. Alafuzov at the time of publication did not become the object of a wide discussion. Active attention to the problem raised by V. A. Alafuzov was attracted only by the opponent of the separation of the fleet, the head of the department of the Higher Political Courses of the Navy, Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev. In his article “On the Question of the Fundamentals of Warfare at Sea,” he notes that
The independence of maritime missions from combined arms missions is also criticized, in particular, according to I. D. Eliseev:
Thus, he believed that the tasks of the fleet were just appendages to the tasks of the land army, whose goals were more extensive - operational. Nevertheless, it was recognized that in some operations the role of the fleet, as a means of delivering the army to the place of the operation, would be decisive.
Also, I. D. Eliseev did not deny the concept of "dominance at sea", however, he gave his definition of this term a little later in his next work, which was a response to the ongoing discussion.
It should be noted that although Eliseev's first article was declared critical, in many respects, some of which are presented above, it was similar to the article by V. A. Alafuzov. Probably, the article itself with an attempt at criticism was written under the influence of the "Admirals' Case", during which V. A. Alafuzov was convicted and deprived of his rank.
Nevertheless, it was precisely the article by Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev that evoked an active response from the naval community. During the period 1948–1949. a number of articles were published that supplemented the research of V. A. Alafuzov and I. D. Eliseev and formed the basis of NMO-51.
Let's take a look at some of these publications.
Discussion
One of the first to respond was Captain First Rank D. G. Rechister. He repeated the thesis of I. D. Eliseev about the impossibility of separating the actions of the fleet from the actions of the land army (i.e., assistance to the army on coastal fronts), while expanding the activities of the fleet also with active economic pressure (operations on enemy communications).
D. G. Rechister also introduces the concept of “fleet operating zone”, which is understood as “part of the sea or ocean theater of operations, in which the fleet, by one force or another, solves the tasks assigned to it.” The concept itself generalizes the other term "task area", bringing it to a strategic meaning. At the same time, D. G. Rechister notes that
In his opinion, this task is available only to coastal ground forces.
Thus, D. G. Rechister sees the main task of the fleet in ensuring the security of the coastal fronts, in turn, one of the important goals of the coastal front is to expand the operational zone of the fleet. Dominance at sea in this case, in the overwhelming majority of cases, should be ensured for the duration of a separate operation (for example, on the route of a convoy in the case of a landing or supply operation), it should be reinforced in the operating zone of the fleet by capturing bases and ports by ground forces, which will turn a temporary dominance is permanent. D. G. Rechister paid special attention to the problems of interaction as the basis for conducting operations and warfare at sea.
K. K. Zotov, in addition to other authors, put forward the theory of methods for conducting operations at sea. He identified three such categories: the method of force, the method of speed, and the method of stealth.
A. A. Alekseev was more specific and formulated several important questions (for example, the question of the meaning of the term "strategic permanent dominance at sea"), which were subsequently widely discussed.
Separately, P. V. Chernyshev stands out, who, unlike other authors, questioned the very concept of dominance at sea, noting that “with modern development aviation fleet and other means of attack "the question of establishing dominance at sea" is problematic and may turn out to be only a desire, not a reality. P. V. Chernyshev also criticized the thesis about the auxiliary role of the fleet in maritime combat operations, highlighting here such operations as landing or repulsing landings, in which the fleet plays the main role, and the ground forces play an auxiliary one.
One of the last articles in this discussion was the second publication of Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev, in which he clarified and deepened the topic of his previous work. So, he once again confirmed his opinion that
In many ways, Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev bases this point of view on the fact of counterbalancing the theory of the countries of the NATO bloc (primarily the United States and Great Britain), in which naval dominance over the enemy was put forward.
In general, I. D. Eliseev formulated the main task of the fleet as
From the position of such a formulation, he criticizes the idea of captain 1st rank D. G. Rechister about independent auxiliary operations of the fleet not in the interests of the land army, but in the interests of the armed forces as a whole.
Regarding the problems of the concept of the term "dominance at sea", I. D. Eliseev did not support the authors who consider it necessary to abandon this term. However, in his opinion, "dominance at sea" itself cannot be considered as the main goal of war at sea. This term is completely identical to the term "favorable operational regime" and reflects the totality of favorable conditions for achieving the main tasks set for the fleet.
One of the first I. D. Eliseev raises the question of a qualitative revision of the composition of the fleet. In particular, I. D. Eliseev touched upon the topic of the security of a battleship (battleship) in modern warfare. He notes:
Here he notes the new location of the battleship:
In general, the work of Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev "On the question of the conduct of hostilities at sea" was the most comprehensive and elaborated in the discussion on the development of the Soviet Navy. In addition to the topics described above, questions were also raised about maritime theaters and morale, and about the concentration of forces in the operation. Many of the ideas of Rear Admiral I. D. Eliseev were included in the provisions of NMO-51. In general, the instruction of 1951 was written under the influence of the theory held by Rear Admiral.
At the same time, the discussion on the development of the navy itself was not over.
Repression
As mentioned above, in 1948, Admiral V. A. Alafuzov, one of the main initiators of the discussion, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years, and in April 1949, the editorial “Against the reactionary ideology of cosmopolitanism” was published in the Marine Collection, which was directed against independent naval science. Articles devoted to naval strategy ceased to be printed, and revealing materials began to appear.
In one of these articles, the editor-in-chief of the Marine Collection, Major General of the Coastal Service S. F. Naida, attacked the Naval Academy, whose teachers used in the educational process, according to S. F. Naida, the books "History wars at sea" by A. N. Shcheglov and "History of war at sea" by A. Shtentsel. These works were declared harmful. In the future, a whole concept of struggle in the Navy against "crawling and servility to Western culture and science", "rootless cosmopolitanism", since "nothing new can be learned from the decaying bourgeoisie and its modern military theorists" was formed.
The works of the Russian “noble-bourgeois historians” A. V. Viskovaty, F. F. Veselago, P. I. Belavenets, A. N. Shcheglov and others were unconditionally rejected. N. L. Klado, M. A. Petrov, B. B. Gervais was accused of "engaging in counter-revolutionary work under the guise of scientific activity after the revolution." "The most harmful manifestation of bourgeois influence" were the scientific works of all those who created the foundations of Soviet naval theory - V. A. Alafuzov, G. A. Stepanov, A. V. Shtal and others. The works of naval historians deserve a similar assessment. S. P. Moiseeva and N. V. Novikova.
It should be noted that such a sharp curtailment of the discussion and the axiomatization of one course with the exclusion of carriers of alternative views had a negative impact on naval art. Thus, the problem of developing a theory of the strategic use of the fleet in the new conditions was pushed aside, and they could return to it only in the 70s with the creation of operational squadrons. The question of the content of the basic concepts of naval art (for example, "dominance at sea") was not resolved. The navy itself, as a result of repressions, suffered significant losses in its senior command staff, which could not but affect the general state of affairs in the navy.
NMO-51
Nevertheless, in 1951, the "Manual on the Conduct of Marine Operations" was published, in which naval theorists managed to collect the main achievements in the development of marine theory over the first post-war decade. In particular, in this manual, "for the first time, Soviet naval science defined maritime strategy as an organic part of the unified military strategy of the state and the most important branch of naval art." The naval strategy itself should be based on the provisions of the unified military strategy of the state, and war at sea is an integral part of the armed struggle as a whole.
The concept of "dominance at sea" was also partially introduced in the form of "strategic dominance at sea", which was not the main goal of war at sea, but was seen as a desirable condition for conducting maritime operations. The main tasks of the fleet were proclaimed: the destruction of the forces of the enemy fleet, undermining the economic power of the enemy by disrupting its sea communications, ensuring the invasion of the Soviet army into enemy territory by landing.
At the same time, due to the active persecution mentioned above, the experience of foreign fleets in World War II was ignored, which led to an incorrect assessment of the significance of individual types of ships. Also, NMO-51 had a serious drawback: the instruction was designed for a fleet still under construction, and most of the provisions could not be implemented in the short term.
HMO-51 was a landmark event for naval theory. After its publication, the study of naval strategy entered the curriculum of the Military Academy of the General Staff. Textbooks and teaching aids were written on the maritime strategy, which developed and supplemented the provisions of the manual. However, the green light for maritime science did not last long - already in 1953, at a military scientific conference, the existence of the category “naval strategy” was declared illegal, “since its recognition allegedly contradicted the principle of the unity of military strategy.”
In 1953, the political leadership of the country is replaced, the new leaders are more categorically disposed towards the fleet. Its significant reduction begins. 240 ships and vessels were cut into scrap metal, and 375 warships were mothballed. In addition, in May 1956, units of the Marine Corps were liquidated.
As mentioned earlier, the instruction of NMO-51 was focused on the future, on the fleet, which had yet to be built. In this regard, the political leadership was at odds with the views of the naval command. The military-political leadership considered the fleet and its use in a probable conflict, based on the available forces, which were significantly reduced and focused on the submarine fleet.
- Gerasimenko Igor
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